| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: startle the old man." He lowered his voice as
though he had known her for years. "I dropped
into a barber's on my way, to get a twopenny
shave, and they told me there he was something of
a character. The old man has been a character all
his life."
Captain Hagberd, daunted by the allusion to his
clothing, had retreated inside, taking his spade
with him; and the two at the gate, startled by the
unexpected slamming of the door, heard the bolts
being shot, the snapping of the lock, and the echo
To-morrow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: as if some one had stepped on his grave.
Something had broken loose in him of which
he knew nothing except that it was sullen
and powerful, and that it wrung and tortured him.
Sometimes it came upon him softly, in enervating reveries.
Sometimes it battered him like the cannon rolling in the
hold of the vessel. Always, now, it brought with it
a sense of quickened life, of stimulating danger.
To-night it came upon him suddenly, as he was
walking the floor, after his wife left him.
It seemed impossible; he could not believe it.
Alexander's Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: as a wolf, and now and then as a great fish. Compare Grimm's
story of the Wolf and Seven Kids, Tylor, loc. cit., and see
Early History of Mankind, p. 337; Hardy, Manual of Budhism, p.
501.
[75] Baring-Gould, Book of Werewolves, p. 178; Muir, Sanskrit
Texts, II. 435.
Now if the storm-wind is a host of Pitris, or one great Pitri
who appears as a fearful giant, and is also a pack of wolves
or wish-hounds, or a single savage dog or wolf, the inference
is obvious to the mythopoeic mind that men may become wolves,
at least after death. And to the uncivilized thinker this
Myths and Myth-Makers |
